Applied Physics
It may not sound like a great thing for your backyard festivities but scientists have figured out how to make the fruit fly live longer. Luckily, humans will get something out of the deal -namely the discovery that a single protein can inhibit aging means we might live longer to be annoyed by insects.
Not this Superfly. A super fruit fly. © Warner Bros.
“This work is important for two reasons,” said study author Richard Roberts, associate professor of chemistry, chemical engineering and biology at the University of Southern California.
“First, it demonstrates that a single inhibitor can…
Genetically modified (GM) crops may contribute to increased productivity in sustainable agriculture, according to a new study which analyzes, for the first time, environmental impact data from field experiments all over the world, involving corn and cotton plants with a Bt gene inserted for its insecticidal properties.
The research was conducted by scientists at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, The Nature Conservancy, and Santa Clara University. The study is accompanied by a searchable global database for…
MIT researchers were recently able to light a 60W light bulb from a power source seven feet away; there was no physical connection between the source and the appliance.
The MIT team refers to its concept as “WiTricity” (as in wireless electricity). Various methods of transmitting power wirelessly have been known for centuries and perhaps the best known example is radio waves. While such that sort of electromagnetic radiation is excellent for wireless transmission of information, it is not feasible to use it for power transmission.
Wireless power transfer over two-meter distance, from the…
While recent advances in neurosurgery have made it possible to precisely target areas in the brain with minimum invasiveness -- using a small hole to insert a probe, needle or catheter -- there remains a disadvantage. The small size of the openings reduces or eliminates direct site visibility and requires greater dexterity, stability and precision by the surgeon.
Prof. Leo Joskowicz
Now, an invention by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher has made it possible to retain the advances of such keyhole surgery through utilization of the “services” of a tiny robot that can guide surgical…
Researchers at the University of Illinois are developing panels of microcavity plasma lamps that may soon brighten people’s lives. The thin, lightweight panels could be used for residential and commercial lighting, and for certain types of biomedical applications.
Cross-sectional diagram of a flat lamp structure based on aluminum foil encapsulated in saphire and a thin glass coating. The lower right portion of the figure presents photographs at two magnifications of an electrode screen with diamond cross-sectional microcavities. The smallest graduation of the scale is 1 millimeter. Credit:…
Radical steps to engineer Earth’s climate by blocking sunlight could drastically cool the planet, but could just as easily worsen the situation if these projects fail or are suddenly halted, according to a new computer modeling study.
The experiments, described in the June 4 early online edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, look at what might happen if we attempt to slow climate change by “geoengineering” a solar filter instead of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The researchers used a computer model to simulate a decrease in solar radiation across the entire…
Discarded crab and lobster shells may be the key to prolonging the life of microbial fuel cells that power sensors beneath the sea, according to a team of Penn State researchers.
To produce energy, microbial fuel cells need organic material for the microbes to consume. However, deep sea sediments can be surprisingly devoid of organic material because living things in the photic zone – the area where light penetrates the water – are continuously recycled and little falls to the ocean floor. An absence of organics limits the lifetime of marine microbial fuel cells.
The researchers include…
A team of biomedical engineers has developed a computer model that makes use of more or less predictable “guesstimates” of human muscle movements to explain how the brain draws on both what it recently learned and what it’s known for some time to anticipate what it needs to develop new motor skills.
The engineers exploited the fact that all people show similar “probable” learning patterns and use them to develop and fine tune new movements, whether babies trying to walk or stroke patients re-connecting brain-body muscle links.
Reza Shadmehr, Ph.D., professor of biomedical engineering at…
You might think it's something from the movie "Total Recall" but instead researchers are using brain "pacemakers" to regulate diseased signals in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients.
These devices are FDA-approved and in use in 30,000 patients but still not well understood.
Biomedical engineers at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have found that stimulation administered by rapid-fire electrical pulses deep in the brain produces what they call an "informational lesion." By relaying a repetitious and therefore meaningless message, constant pulses overwhelm the erratic bursts…
Mule deer are giving new meaning to watching out for other mothers' kids. Whitetail deer, not so much.
An intriguing study of mule deer and whitetail deer conducted by the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada and the University of Lethbridge, also in Canada, showed that both species responded to the recorded distress calls of fawns, similar to the responses elicited when coyotes attack fawns, with mule deer mothers responding to both whitetail and mule deer calls, even when their own fawn stood next to them. In contrast, the whitetail mothers responded only to their own species' call,…